Azrael

Born three hours before Adam, Azrael—the angel of death—enforces the divine command that all living things must return to God. Though no place is beyond his reach, Muslim prophets, saints, and even sorcerers tried to resist him—through prayer, charisma, and esoteric rites designed to defy mortality. These paradoxical efforts reveal a long-standing tension between submission to God’s will and the human yearning to transcend death.

With particular attention to the writings of Muḥyī al-Dīn Ibn ʿArabī (d. 1240), Dunja Rašić traces the emergence of Islamic death-defying practices from the seventh century onward. Ibn ʿArabī, one of the most influential Sufi mystics of the medieval period, claimed among his many spiritual accomplishments the subjugation of Azrael himself. His pursuit of mastery over death was deeply rooted in angelology, prophetic traditions, and thanatology, and his works preserve striking accounts of his encounters with the angel of death. Drawing on these texts, Rašić explores the paradoxes of defying God’s angels while affirming faith in God and reevaluates the functions of angels, the nature of divine (dis)obedience, and the limits of human mortality in Islam and Akbarian Sufism.

An original and pioneering work, Azrael contributes new insights into how Muslims have imagined angels, death, and immortality. It will appeal to scholars of Sufism, Islamic studies, comparative religion, and medieval philosophy, as well as general readers interested in spirituality, esotericism, or the teachings of Ibn ʿArabī.

“With remarkable precision, Rašić’s Azrael situates death not merely as an event but as a form of knowledge—one that has shaped Islamic intellectual history. The exploration of the angel of death, especially, marks a pioneering contribution, as this is the first to treat this figure’s legacy in Islamic writings and, to a lesser degree, art. As with her previous books, Rašić’s monograph breathes new life into Ibn ʿArabī studies.”—Cyrus Ali Zargar, author of Religion of Love: Sufism and Self-Transformation in the Poetic Imagination of ʿAṭṭār

Dunja Rašić is a specialist in philosophical Sufism and the school of Ibn ʿArabī at Tampere University and the Muhyiddin Ibn Arabi Society. She is the author of The Written World of God: The Cosmic Script and the Art of Ibn ʿArabi, Bedeviled: Jinn Doppelgangers in Islam and Akbarian Sufism, and The Nightfolk: Ibn ʿ Arabi Behind the Veil of Night.

History

           Medieval

Religious Studies & Religion

           History of Religion

Medieval and Early Modern Studies

           Medieval Religion

           Magic and Esotericism

           Magic and Esotericism